Innovation in HR: 3 Trends for Talent Acquisition
“Structure, structure, structure” has been the mantra of Talent Acquisition professionals for several years now. If your Talent Acquisition team has successfully implemented a structured, scalable hiring process—especially one that can process hundreds or thousands of applicants across hundreds or thousands of locations—then take a moment to acknowledge this tremendous feat. You’ve officially joined the ranks of best-in-class companies, and are better positioned to secure top talent for your organization.
So what’s next for Talent Acquisition? HR leaders know that pushing forward and staying ahead of industry trends is critical to success. That’s why you’ll see companies that are strong in talent acquisition continue to experiment. Why settle for good when you can have great? In HR, just like in business, the most successful among us are the ones that continue to innovate.
Here are 3 ways you can drive innovation in HR and take Talent Acquisition to the next level:
1. Embrace AI and predictive analytics.
According to Glassdoor, artificial intelligence will impact all facets of the workforce, but the biggest changes will be seen in two key business sectors—Finance and Talent Acquisition. Predictive analytics are already sharpening HR’s decision-making, and coupled with AI capabilities like machine learning, which can probe massive amounts of data for patterns and trends, identify the most predictive models, and learn, adapt, and self-correct over time, HR leaders are poised for success like never before.
For Talent Acquisition specifically, these solutions will provide the ability to quickly sort resumes, make predictive matches between candidates and jobs, calculate turnover risk, and predict labor market shifts and staff shortages.
2. Provide transparency for candidates.
HR is beginning to shake up the silos so that candidates profiles are easily accessible and continue to build by taking in data from key points in the hiring process (so that hiring managers don’t see a “different” candidate than the recruiter, or make decisions based on limited information). This provides great transparency for decision makers internally. The next big obstacle is providing transparency for candidates. Glassdoor puts it best by saying:
In an era when consumers can easily track every step in a FedEx delivery process — from a mobile device — it strikes most job seekers today as archaic to be unable to track the status of a potentially life-changing job application in real time.”
The technology is already in place to support this change. Technically speaking, it’s just a matter of repackaging data from your existing ATS and opening it up to candidates. Candidates expect, and appreciate, communication like this, and if transparency is a core value in your culture, then it’s a necessity to demonstrate it in your candidate experience.
3. Build powerhouse hiring profiles.
When you’re filling vacancies, you want to hire people to satisfy the immediate need, but you also want to hire people who will contribute long-term to your company’s business growth and goals. How do you know when you’ve got someone who will thrive in your culture and drive results in your company? Hiring profiles provide that benchmark. Hiring profiles can be tailored to your organization’s culture and core competencies, and then “plugged in” to a pre-hire assessment to measure a candidate’s fit for the job.
What are the most important things to capture in your hiring profile? That depends on your company, and on the job. Amazon, for example, which is known for hiring pioneers, innovators, and workhorses, looks for traits like Curiosity, Frugality and Customer Obsession when evaluating candidates for leadership roles.
For a further look into the future of HR, see our 2018 HR Trends to Watch, or check out our webinar on How Predictive Analytics is Changing the Game in 2018.
